Dec. 21, 2012

ASU President Joseph Silver (left) talks to Robert Ward at a meeting of the Alabama State Board of Trustees on Friday, Nov. 30, 2012. (Montgomery Advertiser, Amanda Sowards) / Amanda Sowards/Advertiser

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After being pushed out as executive assistant to embattled President Joseph Silver at Alabama State University after about a month of work, Joyce Outler is now unemployed for the first time since the 1980s.

In her short time at ASU, Outler noticed that trustees were overly involved in the operation of the university, that executive vice president John Knight “seemed to be in charge of everything,” and she wrote “something didn’t feel right at ASU.”

Outler was stunned that ASU trustees placed the man she followed from Clark Atlanta University, where she said she was comfortable, happy and just years from retirement, on leave.

Outler, who communicated with the Montgomery Advertiser through email, believes she was pushed out at ASU because of her ties to Silver, whom university trustees placed on paid administrative leave on Nov. 30, the same day the trustees opted not to approve the hiring of Outler and vice president for business and finance Ed Patrick, who also worked with Silver at Clark Atlanta. Patrick told the Advertiser that he was let go after working at ASU for 18 days even though trustees had been involved in his hiring.

“I was shocked that they put him on leave,” Outler wrote. “Who does that after two months? It’s crazy! After all, they had sought him out — his plan was to retire from (Clark Atlanta University) at the end of this month.”

When asked why she believes they placed Silver on leave, Outler wrote: “because he is more honest than they are used to dealing with and he has more integrity.”

“I pride myself on knowing people and something didn’t feel right at ASU,” Outler wrote. “The trustees were always around — I didn’t always see them but I heard they were in other offices.”

Also, she wrote, “the problem John Knight and the trustees had with Dr. Silver is that he reads everything that he signs and he couldn’t be rushed to sign things because of ‘deadlines.’ If he wasn’t sure about a contract, agreement or proposal, he would ask questions, ask me to make a call, or just send it back with a note. That did not seem to be a practice that was welcomed.”

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Kenneth Mullinax, director of media relations at Alabama State, said “some of Ms. Outler’s comments are inaccurate and others are her personal opinion, therefore ASU has no comment.”

Outler questioned board members, who voted not to hire her, being involved in the hiring of support staff.

“I have never, ever heard of the board being involved in hiring staff at my level,” she wrote. “I’m just a support person. I would think they would have better things to do.”

ASU trustees scheduled a special-called meeting of the board’s executive committee for Nov. 26, during which the executive committee voted to place Silver on paid administrative leave. On Nov. 30, the full board voted to keep Silver on paid leave, but did not vote on whether to terminate him, citing the death of his mother a day earlier.

Outler wrote that her first indication that she was being placed on leave occurred on the night of the board’s executive meeting when she tried to enter her office and found her identification card no longer worked. The next morning associate executive vice president Bernadette Chapple was waiting for her with a letter from Knight informing her that she was being placed on administrative leave, Outler wrote.

Then she received another letter early this month, informing her that her employment had been terminated on Nov. 30.

“So I don’t even have another paycheck coming and the bills don’t stop,” Outler wrote.

Outler said the situation has been surreal, especially during the holidays. “I still get up at 5:33 a.m. every morning and try to figure out what I’m going to do with myself for the rest of the day — I’m programmed to go to work. That’s all I know,” she wrote. “So that’s hard.”

Outler wrote that she knows she needs to be working somewhere by the middle of January. “I can’t tell the ASU story to my creditors,” she wrote.

Outler wrote that her faith, family and friends, including Silver and his wife, “have made it a bit easier to go through.”

Outler, who has moved back to her house in Decatur, outside of Atlanta, said she incurred expenses from renting a moving truck to take her property back to Georgia and to buy out her lease here.

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Working for Silver

Outler worked at Clark Atlanta for 15 years as executive assistant to the provost. She began working with Silver in January 2010 when he came to Clark Atlanta to be provost and vice president for academic affairs.

“We just clicked. Dr. Silver often says that I was the first assistant that could almost keep up with him,” she wrote, emphasizing the “almost.”

Outler wrote that Silver works 18 to 20 hours a day and Outler usually worked 12 hours to 15 hours a day. Her home office, she wrote, was nicknamed “Provost Office East.”

Outler wrote that leaving Clark Atlanta was difficult, but “seemed like the right thing to do — a natural progression.”

“It meant that even though Dr. Silver would be going into a new situation, his office support would be consistent,” she wrote.

Outler started at ASU on Oct. 22 — just over a month before she was placed on leave.

Outler wrote that she had never been to Montgomery so coming “was a stretch for me” and wrote that she “had no reason to be in Montgomery other than Dr. Silver and Mrs. Silver.”

“They are two of the most wonderful people I have ever met,” she wrote.

Outler has “two grown children, two grandchildren, a wonderful family, friends, a nice house and a church that I love.”

“I had a job that I loved and could have retired from in a few years,” she wrote.